, though he grasped at the small limbs
quickly enough to have held the boat in place if it had not been in
motion, his impetus was so great that the unsteady skiff recoiled
backward with a force that pitched him over the prow, upon the very top
of the stub. He lurched off to one side, and his feet and legs splashed
into the water; but he escaped a complete ducking by clenching the top
of the trunk with his left arm, while with his right hand he grasped
_one foot of the beaver_! And then he glanced around for his boat.

[Illustration: Mortimer looked after it in utter dismay.--Page 58.]

It was gone, and had left him in a most perilous situation. The light
skiff, impelled by the force of his fall out of it, had floated back
into the current, and was already more than a dozen yards out, moving
down stream.

Mortimer looked after it in utter dismay.

It was now too late to make a swim for it; he could never live in that
strong, icy current long enough to reach it.

With a few cautious hitches he succeeded in gaining a ticklish seat upon
the broken top of the stump, where he maintained himself by resting his
feet upon two of the stoutest sprouts. Seated thus, he could feel an
unsteady quivering of the trunk, a trembling, wrenching motion, that
told, but too plainly, of the powerful force of the flood, and of the
uncertain tenure which he possessed on even this comfortless refuge.

The lad was now thoroughly alarmed, and surveyed his surroundings with a
growing fear that gained not a ray of hope from the prospect. The
situation was truly a grave one.

On all sides was the hurrying flow of the grim, dark waters, which
rushed swirling and eddying onward. The current swashed dismally among
the slender, swaying willows, on either side; and beyond these, he knew
that there was at least three hundred yards of swimming depth before
either shore could be reached.

If any one should happen to pass, he could not, from the land, see
Mortimer, on account of the willows. The nearest house was three or four
miles distant; and a voice could be heard but a little distance, above
the swash of the flood and the rush of the cold wind.

Mortimer's parents did not expect him to return until late in the
evening, and they would probably make no effort to learn of his
whereabouts until after midnight. The night, too, was already growing
very cold, with a raw, gusty wind that soughed drearily among the
willows; his bare hands and wet feet